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Maple&Fig

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Kouign Amann, prounounced queen a-mahn, is a delicious little cake from the North Western region of France. They have recently found popularity in a number of bakeshops, in part thanks to the brilliance of Dominique Ansel. To make them yourself would traditionally require days spent making your own croissant dough, but I know a faster way.

There is an old joke about a dog chasing a car, what is he supposed to do once he catches it? Now that you know how to make pretzels, you might be wondering what you should do next? To me, the obvious answer is beer cheese dip.

As a boy that grew up on the East Coast of Canada, I have always been drawn to the ocean. Since leaving home, I have traveled the globe comparing dozens of different coast lines. And now that I live in Northern California, I have fallen in love with Highway 1. Most people know it as the route from LA to San Francisco, via Santa Cruz. But for me that’s where the real journey begins.

Brioche is amazing. It is a rich, eggy bread with a soft, airy crumb. It toasts beautifully for breakfast, it soaks up custard for french toast, and best of all it makes an amazing slider bun. The traditional method for making brioche is a bit more like making croissant dough. But here I’ll show you how to use your muffin skills to whip up a batch in just a few minutes.

I would love to write one of those click-bait articles, about how commercial vanilla extract causes nearsightedness in children, and the government is in cahoots with optometrists to sell more eye glasses. And while that could be true, it probably isn’t. Instead, my concern is that our baking could be so much better by making our own amped up vanilla extracts.

This recipe was originally adapted fromThe Dinner with Julie Blog but there are dozens of variations available now. My version makes use of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Flour so that it’s gluten free.